97 years old and STILL more wibbly than wobbly...

BROWSING through the Oxford English Dictionary, as I am wont to do at this time of year, I was intrigued to discover that 2014 is the centenary of the earliest known appearance in English of the word ‘wibbly’.

PUBLISHED: 00:00, Wed, Jan 1, 2014

The word, the dictionary said, is an “alteration of wobbly, probably after wibble” and it invited me to “compare earlier wibble-wobble”.

Such an invitation I was naturally unable to decline, so I headed straight to the entry for “wibble-wobble” and read the following explanation:

Oddly enough, however, it went on to mention a use of wibble-wobble from 1847, together with an example from 1877 of ‘wibblety-wobblety’, a 1901 example of ‘wibblely-wobblely’ and a 1904 quotation using wibbly-wobbly, all of which were at least 10 years before the first wibbly.

I found unhelpful the suggestion that I compare this with ‘zigzag’, as I recalled once before trying to distinguish zigs from zags, only to find that both zig and zag were long preceded by the term ‘zigzag’ itself, taking several decades to break loose and develop separate identities. It was difficult therefore to believe that ‘zag’ was a vowel variation of ‘zig’, the two then occurring in collocation in ‘zigzag’ when neither zig nor zag existed at the time. It is also unhelpful to suggest that a zag expresses “a movement or direction inclined at an angle to that indicated by zig,” when there was no zig for it to incline at an angle to when the first zag appeared.

To return, therefore, to wibbles and wobbles, I focused on the definition of wibbly to investigate the suggestion that it was an alteration of wobbly, which I proceeded to look up.

Wobbly, it said, also appears as wabbly and comes from the verb to wobble, with the suffix -y added. Yet the verb to wobble (or wabble) dates back to 1657 while the earliest known use of ‘wabbly’ was not until 1861 and ‘wobbly’ in 1871.

2014 is the centenary of the earliest known appearance in English of the word ‘wibbly’

So it all began with a wobble, we then had to wait 190 years for a wibble-wobble, then another 24 years before anything could be called wobbly.

At that time, the wibble broke loose, possibly in resentment at there being a wobbly without a wibbly, but the two reconciled in wibbly-wobbly in 1904 and 10 years later, wibbly asserted its own independence.

What is completely unclear, however, is whether there is any difference between wibbly and wobbly. The OED defines wibble as an intransitive verb meaning “To wobble; freq. in ‘wibble and wobble’. Cf. wibble-wobble n.” but that, I think, is avoiding the issue.

I suspect that wibble and wobble involve different directions of motion, not unlike wintle (to sway from side to side) and shoogle (to sway to and fro). More research is clearly needed.